240 MAMMALS IN THE WATER 



in the water as on land. The story that pigs cut their 

 own throats when swimming is a myth. To prove it, a 

 whole family of pink pigs were chased into a fine muddy 

 pond, and made to swim across. They swam well, and 

 the * contour line ' of mud along their sides showed that 

 their backs were above water as well as their heads. 

 Elephants are almost as clever in the water as the 

 polar bears. They can swim and walk under water 

 without coming to the surface, keeping the trunk out 

 of the water like a diver's tube. There is plenty of 

 flexibility in an elephant's legs, enough, at all events, to 

 use in swimming ; but the properly aquatic hippo- 

 potamus can scarcely be said to swim it rises and 

 sinks at will, but it habitually walks or runs on the 

 ground at the bottom of the river. Two South 

 American river creatures seem unaccountably aquatic 

 the coypu, which might just as well be a land-rat, 

 but is a water-rat in the process of becoming a 

 beaver, and the capybara, which is a gigantic water 

 guinea-pig. Each is quite at home in the rivers, and, 

 as the capybara is aquatic, there seems no reason why 

 the guinea-pigs or the Patagonian cavies should not 

 learn to swim and dive, if circumstances made it useful. 

 Even man himself becomes almost amphibious in certain 

 regions. Temperature permitting, he swims as well 

 and dives better than many of the animals mentioned 

 above better, for instance, than any dogs. The Greek 





